Warning: The Android operating system provided with phones and tablets is often modified with the addition of proprietary applications from Google or others and may compromise your privacy. We strongly recommend replacing it with either Replicant or CyanogenMod (or compile Android from source for your device).

For more email providers, take a look at Privacy-Conscious Email Services. Please decide for yourself whether if you trust them with your data. For more discussion about safe email providers, please see issue #461.

MyKolab is hosted in Switzerland and benefits from the strong Swiss privacy laws. It is run exclusively with free software and using the service supports the development of Kolab. Also, it lets you export all your data at any time.

Bitmessage is a promising alternative to email, but it has not yet been audited by security professionals. Use at your own risk. If you decide to try out Bitmessage, make sure to generate a completely random ID to greatly reduce the probability of ID collisions.

RetroShare has not been thoroughly audited by security professionals for possible security issues.

“Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security of e-mail communications.”

Tarsnap is not recommended on PRISM Break due to its lack of anonymous payment options and strict copyright on the client that makes it difficult to replace the service in the event Tarsnap is shut down.

BitTorrent Sync, MEGA, and SpiderOak are services that are built on either partially or fully proprietary software. They will not be recommended on PRISM Break until they open source the entirety of their codebase.

With closed source software, you need to have 100% trust in the vendor because there's nothing except for their morality in the way of them leaking your personal information. Even if you can vouch for their integrity, proprietary software invariably has more uncaught security bugs and exploits because there are fewer eyes examining the source code.

Another alternative to cloud storage is local backup with external hard drives and USB flash drives. This method is reliably more secure than storing data on a network, but comes at a convenience cost.

“Off-the-Record Messaging, commonly referred to as OTR, is a cryptographic protocol that provides strong encryption for instant messaging conversations. OTR uses a combination of the AES symmetric-key algorithm, the Diffie–Hellman key exchange, and the SHA-1 hash function. In addition to authentication and encryption, OTR provides perfect forward secrecy and malleable encryption.

The primary motivation behind the protocol was providing deniability for the conversation participants while keeping conversations confidential, like a private conversation in real life, or off the record in journalism sourcing.”

Kolab integrates Roundcube into its webclient and offers desktop clients as well. Recent versions also feature a file cloud turning it into a complete solution for personal information management.

What is an MTA?

“Within Internet message handling services (MHS), a message transfer agent or mail transfer agent (MTA) or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using a client–server application architecture. An MTA implements both the client (sending) and server (receiving) portions of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.

The terms mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host may also refer to a computer performing the MTA function. The Domain Name System (DNS) associates a mail server to a domain with mail exchanger (MX) resource records containing the domain name of a host providing MTA services.”

A mesh-networks is a decentralized peer-to-peer network, with user-controlled physical links that are usually wireless.

“Mesh networking (topology) is a type of networking where each node must not only capture and disseminate its own data, but also serve as a relay for other nodes, that is, it must collaborate to propagate the data in the network.”

If you have system administration knowledge, please strongly consider running an instance of pump.io (or something else) for your friends, family, or favorite community. Many of them would be willing and grateful to escape Facebook if you provide them a way out.

For those of you without your own server, RetroShare is the easiest way to start your own encrypted social network.

identi.ca is a popular Twitter-like social networking hub for the free and open source software community runs a pump.io software platform.

Installing your own add-ons into the Tor Browser is not recommended, as they may bypass Tor or otherwise harm your anonymity and privacy. Check the EFF's Panopticlick to see how trackable your browser configuration is by third parties.

If you're using a Firefox-based browser, you can safeguard your browsing habits and stop advertising companies from tracking you by installing uBlock Origin, Request Policy, and HTTPS Everywhere.

Install NoScript and enable ‘Forbid scripts globally’ to improve the security of your browser by preventing 0day JavaScript attacks. This is a drastic option as it will render many websites unusable as they rely heavily on JavaScript. NoScript offers a whitelist you can use to selectively enable JavaScript for sites you trust, but this is considered especially bad for your anonymity if you're using NoScript with the Tor Browser Bundle.

Why is Adblock Plus not recommended? Adblock Plus shows “acceptable ads” by default, which works against the purpose of the add-on. Either disable acceptable ads or use uBlock Origin instead.

Try to use Tor Browser Bundle (TBB) for all of your web surfing. It will offer you far better anonymity than any other browser. Make sure to learn the basics of Tor before using it. If the site you want to visit will not work in the TBB, try Firefox intead, but realize these browsers do not anonymize your ip by default.

TBB notes: Using the TBB to sign into websites that contain your real ID is counterproductive, and may trip the site's fraud protection. Make sure to check for HTTPS before signing in to a website through Tor. Signing into HTTP websites can result in your ID being captured by a Tor exit node.

Firefox notes: This browser uses Google search by default: replace it with a more private alternative. Another debranded alternative to Firefox is Iceweasel, a browser for Debian-based distributions.

MetaGer is a SaaS by the German non-profit SUMA e.V. that provides you with anonymous meta search results.

Startpage is a SaaS hosted in the USA and the Netherlands that provides you with anonymous Google search and image results through a free proxy.

Ixquick (run by the same company as Startpage) is a meta search engine that returns combined results from nearly 100 sources - excluding Google.

Seeks acts as a personalizing Web server or proxy between you and your data feeds. Connect most search engines, RSS/ATOM feeds, Twitter/Identica, Youtube/Dailymotion, wikis, and basically any source of data, and Seeks will produce a fused personalized stream of results to your queries. See list of Web Seeks nodes.

Disclaimer: Using the recommended projects on this site will not guarantee that 100% of your communications will be shielded against surveillance states. Please do your own research before trusting these projects with sensitive information.